The publicity for the Hour of Code December 9th -15th has made me think about the role that coding has in schools of moving the relationship we expect students to have with technology in education from students being consumers of content to students being creators of content. It has also got me, as a child of the 70's and early 80's and a teacher from 1990 onwards, reflecting on how the pendulum swings in education. My first experiences of computers at school in about 1982 involved binary programming, punch cards and making something, possibly, move on the screen after a few hours. I have to admit that as a student, unlike some of my friends, I found this less than inspiring.When I began my teaching career things had moved on a little and we were using LOGO in class to try to get a Valiant Turtle to move along the ground which it did about 25% of the time before running out of power. For a long while LOGO commands were included in Mathematics curriculum in the UK and examples of good LOGO activities can be found on sites like nrich . However LOGO tended to be taught in a compartmentalised way rather than exploring the transdisciplinary potential of coding. More recently coding seems to have faded into the background as it has been assumed that it is no longer needed as it has become less important to understand how devices work in order to use them. So then we come to the present time when the pendulum looks to be moving back in the direction of coding being viewed as important again. Why should this be and what are the benefits?If we are to accept Alan Kay's definition that "Technology is anything invented after you were born",then Smart Phones are not technology for our Kindergärtners, tablets are not technology for our Pre K's and laptop computers and the internet do not count as technology for any student still in school. This is something anyone still proudly talking about a C21st education and C21st skills should bear in mind. The question then arises how do we use the ubiquitous tools of the late 20th and early 21st centuries most effectively to aid student thinking? One key use of the tools I would propose is to enable them to become tools of creation for students as opposed to tools of consumption. In order for this to happen effectively coding plays a key role in empowering students. Unlike my school day struggles with BASIC and punch cards, Scratch and similar programmes allow students to drag and drop blocks of code to quickly and simply achieve a motivating level of success. Sites like learn.code.org allow teachers and students to pick up the basics quickly. What is required is a commitment by schools to ensuring that coding is viewed as a C21st literacy and an empowering of students to become creative and skilled users of that literacy across all curriculum areas. In doing so we will unleash the power of the tools all students take for granted and place the ability to be truly creative in the hands of all of our students.

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AuthorMy name is Derek Pinchbeck. I am the Learning and Teaching Adviser for English Schools Foundation in Hong Kong. For the last 25 years I have been teaching in International Schools around the World. During my teaching career I have been fascinated by the question "How do we get students to think and create with what they know?" This blog is a collection of some of my thoughts as I strive to answer that question.